According to CBC News, the dig began in May 2018 and was a part of the Canadian government's conditions for a replacement span permit.

Walpole Island First Nation tribe owns the land and hired the archaeological firm AECOM. Canadian Transit Co. funded the project, which CBC reported May was expected to cost more than $1 million.

The archaeological mitigation area is at Villa Maria, Indian Road and a part of land between University Avenue and Riverside Drive in Windsor, CBC reported.

"We like to think this is the heart and soul of our traditional territory," Dean Jacobs, of the Walpole Island First Nation, told CTV News Windsor on Thursday. "This project does start connecting the dots from our First Nation at Walpole Island, the Windsor area, as part of our traditional territory."

CTV News Windsor reported that AECOM hopes to complete the archaeological dig at the site by the end of 2019.

However, not only are the Detroit River's banks prime for discoveries, but plenty of historical oddities lie within its waters as well.

War cannons, old wooden ships, cars, plus hundreds of firearms and even criminal evidence has been recovered from the Detroit River, the Free Press reported in February 2017.

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Below the murky, rolling currents of the Detroit River is a floor loaded with centuries of artifacts: war cannons, old wooden ships, cars and hundreds of firearms, ranging from wooden muskets to automatic handguns.
Wochit

A number of curious finds that have surfaced from the river, including:

A DeLorean in the 1980s

A bronze statue stolen from the Grosse Pointe War Memorial in 2009

A 6,000-pound anchor from a historic steamship pulled out in Nov. 2016 near the Ambassador Bridge

Six 1700s-era cannons recovered from the 1980s to 2011, one near Cobo Center was about 6-feet-long and 1,300 pounds

A M1 Carbine rifle from sometime between World War II to the 1960s, plus a propeller from a sunken Prohibition-era rum runner found near the bridge that have been mounted on a wall at the Detroit Police Underwater Recovery Team headquarters